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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559229">The Calculus of Nocturnes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants'>fuzzballsheltiepants</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>All For The Game - Nora Sakavic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Teachers, Asexual Neil Josten, Classical Music, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, High School, Light Angst, M/M, Music, Piano, Pining, math teacher!neil, music teacher!andrew</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:21:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,863</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil Josten is a high school math teacher with a secret obsession: the classical piano he hears music teacher Andrew Minyard playing every afternoon.  Eventually his secret is found out, and his world begins to open up.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>809</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Calculus of Nocturnes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/gluupor/gifts">gluupor</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/gifts">moonix</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is for the always incredible gluupor and moonix.  You know what you did.</p><p>Please enjoy <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21xMYgnlox8yz5aOzKQdjB">this playlist</a>, which is the songs I had in mind as I wrote, in order as Neil experiences them.  </p><p>Thank you as always to @tntwme for the beta, and @foxsoulcourt for cheerleading and helping me brainstorm a title, which is always the worst part of every fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The halls were finally quiet, the thunder of feet and chatter of a thousand voices dissipated into an occasional echoing whisper. Neil could hear the rustle of pages turning in the classroom across the hall; Matt, correcting homework. Trigonometry tests were waiting for him in a haphazard stack; Neil hesitated, one finger pressed to the paper, while he considered.</p><p>In the end, the secret music won out. It always did.</p><p>Neil slipped through the halls, unheard, unseen. He had the best route memorized: behind the computer labs, past the art rooms and the auditorium, then a left down the band corridor and he could hear it. The piano was a little muffled by the closed door, but it was beautiful, as it always was.</p><p>He let himself slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, head back against the cinderblock. Andrew was playing Bach today; Neil felt himself relax into it. There was something both predictable and unexpected about the music; it reminded him of solving a calculus equation. He liked it when it was Bach, or Handel or Mendelssohn. The best was Mozart but it was rarely that.</p><p>Liszt...that was a bad sign. The one time he had heard Liszt he had listened for a moment and then tiptoed back down the hall. There hadn’t been any music at all for a few days after that.</p><p>One piece blended into another. He didn’t know what these were: sonatas? Fugues? Nocturnes? The difference eluded him. All he knew was that for these precious ten, fifteen minutes he let himself float on the sea of notes and nothing else mattered.</p><p>A scuffling down the main hallway pulled Neil out of his trance. He checked his watch; he had let himself sit longer than he should. A random kid he didn’t recognize ran past his corridor and he got to his feet and dragged himself away on whisper-quiet feet.</p><p>A steady rain was falling, glazing the orange leaves on the trees when he left an hour later, the unfinished tests in his bag. He sighed, then ducked his head and ran for the parking lot, puddles splattering his pants. By the time he flung himself into his car, he was soaked through the cheap button down shirt he wore, through the t-shirt underneath, and it was a good thing there was nobody to see what his wet khakis were attempting to show.</p><p>He laughed at himself, at the scent of the ozone in the air, at the rivulets trickling down his neck as he swiped some of the moisture off his face. The rain was a drumbeat against the roof of his car, and he could almost hear the way swift fingers would run across piano keys to harmonize with it. Shaking his head at himself, he twisted the key in the ignition and tossed his arm over the seat to check around him, and almost jumped out of his skin.</p><p>Andrew Minyard was watching him from the car next to him, expression unreadable.</p><p>Neil wondered for a second if he knew about Neil’s habit—but no. Surely Andrew would’ve said something by now, even if he rarely said much of anything. Shrugging away the tendrils of guilt he could not explain, Neil headed towards home.</p><hr/><p>The sun was already setting when Neil dragged himself out of the school. It set the scattered clouds on fire, bathing the parking lot in warm golden tones that belied the chill in the air. Neil tugged his collar up and shivered. He had once thought it didn’t get cold this far south, but the previous winter had proved him wrong.</p><p>He had just pulled out of the teacher’s lot, heading towards the entrance when a streak of black shot towards his car. He slammed on his brakes reflexively, but he thought maybe not fast enough; he didn’t see any sign of the little creature, whatever it had been.</p><p>“No,” he muttered, shifting into park. <em>No no nonononononononono</em>—</p><p>Movement, in his rear view mirror. A person. They were oddly blurry, and Neil dashed at his eyes, surprised to find his fingers come away damp. His breath was coming short, and he fumbled with the door, practically falling onto the asphalt when it opened.</p><p>Andrew Minyard was crouched at the curb, staring intently under the low bushes that lined the driveway.</p><p>“Did I kill it?” Neil asked, his voice cracking.</p><p>Andrew flicked a glance at him. “Shhh,” he said. “You didn’t hit it. It’s just scared.”</p><p>It was a cat, a very small cat with big ears and blue-gray eyes, and orange patches mixed into the black fur. It flattened even closer to the mulch when Neil approached, and opened its tiny mouth in what was clearly supposed to be an intimidating hiss.</p><p>“Now, now,” Andrew murmured, hovering a hand above the tiny cat, “none of that.” There was something soothing to his voice, almost musical; a stark contrast to his usual flatness.</p><p>Quick as a snake, Andrew’s hand shot down and grasped the cat by the scruff of the neck, easing it out from the tangled branches. The cat dangled in the air unprotesting, its eyes darting between the two of them. There were no visible wounds, and Neil took a deep, shaking breath, then another. And another.</p><p>A warm hand came to rest on the back of his neck. “You can stop freaking out now, it’s just a kitten.” But the hand squeezed gently, and Neil thought he understood why the cat had calmed down. It felt like a Bach prelude, that hand on his skin. He wanted to lean into the contact, but they were crouched by the side of the school driveway, and the sun was setting, and Neil was shivering, and the whole thing was ridiculous, somehow.</p><p>“What do we do with a kitten?” Neil asked, once he thought his voice wouldn’t tremble.</p><p>Andrew stood, still dangling the kitten. “The vet, I guess. Then animal control, in case someone claims it. You want to take it?”</p><p>Neil half shook his head, half shrugged, and fully felt like an idiot. “I don’t know any vets. I don’t really know anything about animals.”</p><p>“There’s a box in my trunk.”</p><p>It took a second to process that as an instruction; Andrew’s car was idling behind Neil’s, and he went to the open driver’s side door and popped the trunk. The requested box had sheet music in it; piles and piles of sheet music. “Should I just dump this stuff out?”</p><p>Andrew made a noncommittal noise. When Neil had dumped it out and brought it around, the kitten was clutched to Andrew’s chest. It practically disappeared into his black coat, just two little eyes staring out. With startling gentleness, Andrew detached its nails from his clothing and laid it into the box. He set the box in his passenger seat, gave Neil a short nod, and Neil watched his taillights disappear with a swirl of emotions in his chest he could not hope to decipher.</p><hr/><p>“C’mon, man, you gotta come out with us.” Matt was slouched in his chair, almost looking normal-human-sized as he jabbed a fork into a tupperware. “It’s Friday night! Aren’t you tired of going back to an empty apartment?”</p><p>Neil chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. “Not really, if I’m being honest.”</p><p>There was safety there, and quiet. Every inch of his apartment was familiar, from the small crack in the ceiling in the living room to the way his bed creaked as he settled into it. He didn’t have to worry about whether he made sense in his apartment, didn’t have to deal with people staring at him with that look in their eyes, that look that told him he had just revealed some damaged facet of his life that he had always thought was normal.</p><p>Matt shook his head at him. “You have to expand your horizons! I mean, when was the last time you got laid? Or even went out on a date?”</p><p>“Enough, Boyd,” came a voice from across the staff room.</p><p>Matt rolled his eyes. “This is none of your business, Andrew.”</p><p>“Somebody else’s sex life is none of yours either,” said Andrew mildly. He hadn’t even looked up from his book; one finger was tucked under a page, ready to turn, the other hand held a half-eaten sandwich. He looked as remote as he always did, as utterly unfeeling.</p><p>But Neil knew there was more lurking under that marble exterior. He heard it, every day, in the way Andrew’s fingers flew over the piano keys, coaxing out more feeling from ivory and wood than he ever showed on his face. He’d seen it, in the gentleness of his calloused hands as they cradled the kitten.</p><p>“I don’t get that guy,” Matt whispered, but he didn’t bring up the subject again.</p><p>Matt left early, needing to set up for some sort of experiment for his seniors. Neil was left to stare at the worn formica table, pretending to grade homework while his mind buzzed with a thousand inane thoughts. Finally he gave up and stood abruptly, nearly crashing into Andrew as he turned to the door.</p><p>They stared at each other for a moment before Neil cleared his throat. “Thank you. For before.”</p><p>He wanted to say more; to thank him for afternoons spent on hallway floors, and evenings spent looking up music, flipping through composer after composer until he knew the way Brahms thundered and Mozart flirted and Beethoven poured out his soul across keys and strings. But Andrew just quirked an eyebrow at him and pushed past without a word, and Neil was left feeling like something valuable had just slipped out of his grasp.</p><p>That afternoon, it was Chopin. At least, Neil thought it was Chopin; it wasn’t one he had heard before, but it felt the same, a melancholy that yet didn’t weigh him down. He rested his cheek on his bent knees and let his mind go quiet.</p><hr/><p>It wasn’t Chopin.</p><p>Neil spent hours that weekend listening to Chopin. Then Scriabin. Then Satie and Debussy, even though he was pretty sure it wasn’t Debussy because he remembered hearing Andrew once say something disparaging about Clair de Lune and some movie Neil had never seen.</p><p>Monday there was a staff meeting. Andrew disappeared down his hallway after. Neil couldn’t risk following him and getting found, but he found himself looking in that direction until Dan said something, pulling his attention back to her scheduling question.</p><p>Tuesday, it was Beethoven. Neil wondered what Andrew was purging as the notes bled through the door, and he found his eyes burning.</p><p>Wednesday, some students waylaid him with questions about their AP Calculus prep. He answered as best he could while one part of his mind was listening for chords and phrases and a melody that would never come.</p><p>Thursday, it was something else, something that started out light, delicate. Neil found himself getting swept into the swirl of notes as it deepened, then resurfaced. Not quite Mozart’s ironic playfulness, but somehow it gave him that same feel, as if the composer mocked him with the illusion of simplicity. It brought him back to university, and solving elegant equations on a white board, seemingly impossible things coming together into a neat solution and leaving him breathless.</p><p>Friday was the day it all came apart.</p><p>It was a Brahms day, all thunder and lightning mingling with the softness of a cloud-streaked sky after the storm. When the song came to an end, Neil made to get up; he only let himself have a brief respite on the best days. But where normally the music would resume a few seconds later, this time he heard footsteps instead, and Andrew’s voice, too low to catch the words. Neil scrambled towards the main hallway only for the door to open behind him. “...yeah, I heard you. Yeah. Aaron—”</p><p>Neil heard the second Andrew noticed him. There was a sudden coldness, like the falling of snow. He tried to pretend that he was just casually in that particular corridor, but there was nothing else there; he frantically tried to come up with an excuse. “Josten?”</p><p>Neil suppressed his flinch as he stopped. “Andrew.”</p><p>“I’m on my way,” Andrew said into his phone. “Did you need something, Josten?”</p><p>As always, his tone was mild. Bored. But there was something in his eyes that Neil didn’t quite understand. He expected anger, and that was there, yes, in the flatness of the stare that met him. But that wasn’t all. Neil was no expert in Andrew Minyard’s expressions, but he thought there might have been something like—hurt.</p><p>His lie died on his tongue. “Sorry,” he said, his tongue thick and unwieldy. “I, um. I listen to you play sometimes.”</p><p>Andrew nodded as if that was the expected response. “How long.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“How long have you been listening to me?”</p><p>Neil was pretty certain his swallow was audible. “It started about a month after I started working here.”</p><p>“That was a year and a half ago.”</p><p>“Yeah. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know—”</p><p>Andrew pushed past him without a word, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “Andrew,” Neil said to his retreating back, but there was no evidence that he had even heard. Neil stared down the hallway at the music room door, standing ajar and forgotten and silent, and he wondered what he had just lost.</p><hr/><p>“Hey, man, I’m glad you came!” Matt tugged Neil into a one-armed hug and turned to the bar. “Look who’s here!”</p><p>A half-joking cheer went up around the bar. “So we have two births to celebrate!” Allison proclaimed, holding up a glass with something bright green in it.</p><p>“What?” Neil asked.</p><p>“Two?” Dan frowned, confused.</p><p>“Yes, two. Andrew’s sister-in-law had her baby last night, so he’s now an uncle, believe it or not. And Neil here is finally emerging from his cocoon, being born as the cute little butterfly we always hoped he’d be!”</p><p>The bar rocked with their laughter; Neil almost turned around and went home, but his attention had been caught by the first bit. “Andrew’s brother had a baby?”</p><p>“Poor kid,” Seth sniped from his position at the bar. Dan smothered her laugh in her hand, Matt chuckled, Allison laughed; only Renee and Jeremy looked uncomfortable.</p><p>“Why?” Neil asked, and there must have been something in his voice, some hint of who he used to be, because the others stopped laughing. An uncomfortable silence fell. “Why ‘poor kid’?”</p><p>“He didn’t mean it,” Dan tried.</p><p>“Yes, he did. Did something happen?”</p><p>“No, no,” Matt said, throwing a pacifying arm over Neil’s shoulder. “The baby’s fine. Can I get you a drink?”</p><p>“I’d like someone to explain this to me.”</p><p>“It’s just—it’s <em>Andrew</em>,” Allison said, as if that was explanation enough. “It’s his <em>twin</em>.”</p><p>Neil ducked out from under Matt’s arm; he could hear his pulse beating in his ears, a drumbeat that drowned out all else. He swallowed down the vicious words that threatened behind his teeth and took a couple deep breaths. “Thanks for inviting me out, I guess. I think I’m going to go home.”</p><p>“Aww, don’t be like that, Neil,” Allison said.</p><p>“Like what?” Everyone froze. “Last I checked we were responsible for educating high school kids, I didn’t think we were supposed to act like them.”</p><p>He thought Jeremy tried to stop him, but he didn’t look back. His apartment was only a few blocks away, and he picked up a jog, gulping down the damp spring air. Before long he was back in the safety of his apartment, the door locked at his back, his familiar furniture as worn and comfortable as always.</p><p>His hands were trembling as he called up Spotify and sorted through his playlists. He’d found most of the songs Andrew had played over the past eighteen months, and he clicked through, trying a Chopin nocturne, then Beethoven, then Brahms. But it all felt distant, and hollow, and strange, and in the end he put on something he had never heard before, a Debussy orchestral piece, and let it play until he fell asleep.</p><hr/><p>There was no music on Monday.</p><p>Neil had tried; he had congratulated Andrew on his new niece in the staff room, wanting to convey, in those simple banal words, his apology and his gratitude. But the words were as jarring as a missed note and Andrew merely nodded and turned back to his book.</p><p>The music hallway echoed in its silence on Tuesday. When Neil went out to the staff parking lot, Andrew’s car was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>He told himself it meant nothing. He told himself Andrew was probably spending time with his brother and his niece.</p><p>But the silence sounded like Liszt, and he couldn’t drown it out.</p><p>On Wednesday, Neil went straight home after finishing his lesson plans.</p><p>He put Bach on as loud as he could stand, until it reverberated in every corner of his apartment, chasing out the emptiness that went by the name of safety. It was the Wedge fugue, and the organ was unforgiving; it overwhelmed him, until all he could think about was notes chasing notes in an ever-expanding spiral.</p><p>He found himself grasping after something when it was finished. An equation, he thought, something familiar and enormous, like the beginning of the universe. Another song, and another, and another; Bach and Beethoven, and then the Mozart that he rarely let himself listen to because it made him feel too much that he couldn’t explain. And it was there, in all of them. Precision. Perfection.</p><p>It was mathematical.</p><p>Google provided him with actual answers for once; article after article about the way composers used math as the foundation of the music, wittingly or not. He learned about keys and octaves and formulas and ratios, and something clicked in his head, or maybe it was in his heart. Everything made sense to him now: why he sought out the music again and again, why it brought him that same feeling of standing in front of a white board filled with letters and numbers and symbols that had all come together into an elegant solution.</p><p>Electricity coursed through him. He grabbed his phone, to call—who? Matt wouldn’t care; his former roommate Kevin would, but he was three thousand miles away swamped in his PhD studies. He thumbed through his contacts until he found the only person he thought might understand.</p><p>“What the fuck,” came Andrew’s voice through the phone, cracked and hoarse with sleep.</p><p>“Oh.” Neil glanced at his phone; it was after midnight. Well after midnight. One fourteen a.m. to be exact. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”</p><p>“Josten?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Are you bleeding?”</p><p>Neil reflexively looked down at himself. “No?”</p><p>“Have you been kidnapped?”</p><p>The corner of Neil’s mouth twitched up. “No.”</p><p>“Stranded by the side of the road surrounded by wolves?”</p><p>Neil laughed. “No.”</p><p>“Go the fuck to sleep.”</p><p>The line went dead.</p><hr/><p>By some blessed coincidence, Neil was on cafeteria duty the next day. He kept his lunch at his desk, so he wouldn’t even have to go to the staffroom to fetch it. It was easy to disappear into a throng of seniors as he passed by the offices and the music corridor; once in the free-for-all of the lunch room he breathed a sigh of relief.</p><p>Safe. Andrew never came here, having somehow negotiated or bribed his way out of lunch duty for all eternity.</p><p>Neil picked a table in one corner of the room while he ate his food without tasting it, scanning the students for any sign of assholery. It was a pretty quiet affair, all told; spring had suddenly erupted in a symphony of sunshine and daffodils, and most of the students seemed bent on getting outside as soon as possible. He finished his lunch and stood to start his patrol, only to trip and fall backwards over his chair when he found Andrew standing right behind him.</p><p>Brief silence settled across the cafeteria, and then a student started clapping, soon joined by the rest. “Way to go, Mr. J!” called out one of the juniors in his pre-calc class. Neil rolled his eyes as he got to his feet and did a mock bow. If the hand behind his back involved an extended middle finger, none of the students could see it anyhow.</p><p>There was something tucked into the corner of Andrew’s mouth when Neil finally turned to face him. He thought maybe it was amusement, but he couldn’t be sure. They stared at each other for an excessively long time before Neil finally asked, “Did you need something?”</p><p>“Dare I ask what was so important that you called me at one o’clock in the morning?”</p><p>“I didn’t realize it was that late. Sorry about that.”</p><p>Andrew gave a put-upon sigh. “That doesn’t answer the question.”</p><p>“I…” Neil glanced around; none of the kids were paying them any mind. “You know I’ve been listening to you, and I like to go and find the songs you play so I can listen to them again? And last night I was listening to Bach, it was something I hadn’t heard you play before but I like it because I can’t think when I’m listening to it. And after it was done I realized that it’s all maths. This music, it’s—”</p><p>“Math, not maths, Neil.”</p><p>Neil huffed. “It’s short for mathematics, not mathematic, but you’re not listening!”</p><p>“Quite obviously I am.”</p><p>“Only to correct my grammar,” Neil grumbled. “But anyway, my point was, I couldn’t ever understand why it always feels right, you know? The music that you play. It just, it—it makes my brain calm the fu—, er, calm down. And that reminded me of the way I feel when I’m doing complex equations. It’s like this...zen state, or something. So I was doing some research and I guess that’s this whole thing, and I don’t know, I was just excited and I wanted to share it with someone.”</p><p>Andrew blinked at him, long gold-tipped lashes brushing his cheek, the only hint of any emotion on his face. “And why did you call me?”</p><p>Neil took a half-step back, his leg brushing against the chair he had fallen over. “I don’t know. I guess I thought since you love music…”</p><p>“I don’t.”</p><p>Neil’s hands clenched into involuntary fists at the blatant lie. “C’mon, Andrew, you don’t need to deny it. It’s obvious, the way you play.”</p><p>“Necessity and love are not the same thing.”</p><p>Neil’s words failed him. He thought maybe he opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and after a few moments Andrew turned on his heel and left the cafeteria.</p><p>And still the music room remained silent.</p><hr/><p>The rhythm of his sneakers on the pavement matched the strings playing through his headphones. It felt like dancing, not that he knew what dancing felt like. All he knew is that he felt lighter as Vivaldi surrounded him, obscuring the sounds of traffic and the whirring of his own brain.</p><p>He was gasping when he finally pulled up, sweat matting his hair to his scalp. This was always the worst part about running. He relished the rest of it, the burn in his muscles, the peace that stole through him; it was a form of meditation, the ground under his feet and sun over his head the only church he recognized.</p><p>Rounding a corner, he almost tripped over the curb when he saw Andrew, not ten yards in front of him. He was getting the mail, which seemed such a profoundly ordinary thing to do; somehow it had never occurred to him that Andrew had to get the mail. He laughed to himself at the sheer stupidity of that.</p><p>Andrew heard.</p><p>He froze for a second with one hand in the mailbox, and Neil swallowed another laugh as he tugged his headphones down. “Hey. I didn’t know you lived around here.”</p><p>“What do you plan to do with that information?”</p><p>“Stalk you, obviously,” Neil said, rolling his eyes. “Nothing, it’s just, I’m only a couple blocks away.”</p><p>“I fail to see why that matters.”</p><p>Something cracked, just a tiny bit, in Neil’s chest. “It doesn’t. Never mind.”</p><p>He started to walk away, but turned back. “Hey, a few weeks ago you were playing something and I can’t figure out what it was.”</p><p>“That sounds like a you problem.”</p><p>Neil couldn’t stop the smile that pulled at his lips. “I guess it is, but I was hoping you’d be willing to help?”</p><p>Andrew’s rigid posture softened, just a fraction. “I’ll need you to be more specific.”</p><p>“Uh, it was the week before your niece was born? I thought it was Chopin but I searched and I searched and I don’t think it was.”</p><p>There was a peculiar look in Andrew’s eyes, like he was seeing Neil for the first time. “Field.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“John Field. Nocturnes.”</p><p>“Oh. Okay, cool. I’ll look that up.”</p><p>Andrew nodded and Neil turned to go when he caught movement in the window. A cat, black and orange, sat in the window, watching. A normal-sized cat, now; no longer small enough to fit in Andrew’s palm but familiar nonetheless. “You kept it.”</p><p>One eyebrow went up.</p><p>“The cat, you kept it. I didn’t realize. What’s its name?”</p><p>For a long moment he didn’t think Andrew would answer, then: “Treble.”</p><p>Neil nodded at that; fitting name for the cat of a musician. He should leave; no doubt he was testing Andrew’s patience as it was, but for some reason he couldn’t get his feet to move. Andrew gave him a mocking salute with his mail and started for the house. Just before he reached the door, Neil blurted out, “Are you ever going to play again?”</p><p>Andrew tripped over a brick in his walkway. Once he was solidly on his feet he glanced over his shoulder at Neil. “Are you ever going to ask me if you can listen?”</p><p>And then he was gone.</p><hr/><p>Neil’s feet knew the way through the hallways with no input from him. Which was a good thing, because his brain was on overdrive as he fought to figure out what to say. He reached the music room door too soon; he had no idea how long he stood out there before he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and knocked.</p><p>The door swung open. Andrew was already walking away, square and sturdy and sure in his space. Neil followed more slowly, taking in the big room with the acoustic ceiling, the floor rising in big steps with rows upon rows of music stands. A drum kit sat in one corner; the piano, a rundown-looking upright, in another.</p><p>Andrew sat on the bench by the piano and waited, his fingers trailing idly over the keys. Neil cleared his throat. “Thanks for telling me about Fields,” he said, rubbing one hand awkwardly through his hair. “The nocturnes are, um.”</p><p>One eyebrow went up; so did Andrew’s mouth in one corner, a tiny twitch, nothing more. “I’m sure Fields would appreciate your eloquent assessment.”</p><p>Neil laughed. “I’m sorry, you know. That I listened without asking. At first I didn’t really think about it, but I was afraid of being found out so I guess I knew it was kind of a shitty thing to do.”</p><p>“Why did you?”</p><p>Neil picked at a bit of flaking paint on one of the music stands. “I don’t know, honestly. It started out by accident, I was kind of exploring and I heard this music and I just—I was entranced by it. I’d never really listened to music, you know? Like, really listened. I’d play the radio sometimes in my car or whatever but this was different.”</p><p>“What was it?” Andrew asked. “Do you remember?”</p><p>“Yeah, I went home and googled famous classical songs and listened until I found it. It was Für Elise. But there was something in the way you played it, the version on Spotify, it’s beautiful, but yours felt like more somehow? I don’t know, it sounds stupid, but I came back the next day, and you were playing something else, and it just became this thing. I’d listen to you, and then I’d go home and try to figure out what it was, and sometimes I could and sometimes I couldn’t.”</p><p>Neil shrugged, a little helplessly. He tried to think of how to explain it, what the music had meant to him, how it had filled his lonely afternoons and grounded him, how it had made him feel a connection with another human, an understanding that he hadn’t been able to reach with the other teachers. How it had helped lance something long-festering and wash it clean.</p><p>“It helped me feel. I had blocked so much out, you know?” He gestured to the scars on his face; all the staff knew the socially acceptable version of his life, but he never talked about it past the surface. “I had to, in order to keep going. I was always fine, because I didn’t have a choice. And this—it’s not just the music, it’s the way you play because Spotify just isn’t the same, it was like, suddenly it was okay if I wasn’t fine anymore.”</p><p>Andrew’s eyes never left his, even as his fingers started to slowly pick out a tune, soft and lovely and familiar. Für Elise, just the right hand melody. It sounded different like this, almost a lament, and Neil wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t look away from Andrew.</p><p>“If I asked you to stop?” Andrew asked, his voice a quiet counterpoint to the song that was starting to pick up speed.</p><p>“I would,” Neil said promptly. “I have. I came down a couple of times after you found me, but mostly I just wanted to apologize. But you were never playing, so I stopped coming.”</p><p>The left hand joined the right, and suddenly it was—perfect, the lower notes adding depth and richness to the poignancy of the higher. Andrew finished the brief song and went into something else, another Beethoven piece though Neil could never remember which one was which. When that one was finished, he stopped, his hands dropping onto his knees.</p><p>“Bring your papers next time,” Andrew said, pulling the cover down over the keys, a clear dismissal. Neil blinked at him, trying to make sense of his words, then was on his feet and out into the hallway before Andrew could change his mind.</p><hr/><p>“Every ten year old music student knows that,” Andrew said, his fingers never pausing as they flew over the keys.</p><p>“Every ten year old music student knows physics?” Neil countered, waving the paper in Andrew’s face. “Look, just look at this equation, it’s so pretty.”</p><p>Andrew huffed. “Only you could get hard over a fucking physics equation.”</p><p>Neil felt his ears heat. He was suddenly too aware of their proximity, of the way he could see the muscles in Andrew’s shoulders flexing as he reached for the notes, of the nimbleness of his broad hands and the look in his eyes as he managed a difficult passage.</p><p><em>It’s not the physics,</em> his traitorous brain supplied, and he stood up abruptly. Andrew stumbled over a couple of notes at the sudden movement, but regrouped quickly. “Big date tonight?”</p><p>There was a slightly wild air to Neil’s answering laugh. “Yeah, no.” He cleared his throat and gathered up his half-graded homework. “I just, um. I have to…”</p><p>On that utterly stupid note, he fled.</p><p>He went on his run with Reichart blasting in his headphones, studiously avoiding Andrew’s neighborhood. It did little to clear the maelstrom his head. He knew now how Andrew would play the piano part, rapid-fire and perfect, his whole body stretching to span the keyboard.</p><p>But that wasn’t even it anymore, or not all of it. Andrew’s mind was as agile as his fingers. He had a dry sort of humor and a way of seeing through Neil, of paring everything down to its barest essentials and not flinching at what was revealed. Andrew never asked about Neil’s scars; but when Neil told him the unsanitized version one afternoon, his back against the wall and arms around his knees, his voice clinical and unrecognizable to himself, Andrew didn’t give him awkward meaningless words of sympathy.</p><p>Instead, he offered kernels of his own truths. A childhood spent in foster care, jumping from home to miserable home; the discovery of his musical talent opening him up to predators of a different kind, people eager to mine the child prodigy for all he was worth. At sixteen he had found his brother, and left the concert world behind. It explained why a man of this level of ability was the high school instructor in a small town, nameless and invisible.</p><p>The other teachers hadn’t understood the newfound friendship. Matt and Dan openly worried about him; Allison just watched him with cool grey eyes and said nothing. Neil couldn’t explain. He had never thought it was possible to look into the darkest reaches of himself, and find someone looking back unblinking.</p><p>Neil finished his run no clearer than he had started it. The worst thing was, he was pretty certain Andrew had no interest in him whatsoever, other than as a mild distraction from the routine of his life. According to school gossip, Andrew was perpetually single; Allison was adamant he was gay; others insisted he was straight but that no woman in her right mind would have him. Neil privately wondered if he was ace, like himself, but he refused to enter into the pool. There was a pride flag sticker on one corner of his piano, but that didn’t mean anything; there was one on Neil’s desk too. Principal Wymack had offered them up to all the teachers at the beginning of the year, a symbol to queer students of solidarity and understanding. Almost all the teachers had taken one.</p><p>Neil went to bed early and woke up hard. He usually just ignored it; eventually it would go away. But his hand crept down, mindlessly stroking himself while his mind chased after shadowy images from his dreams. Finally his brain settled on an image: Andrew, leaning against the piano, that little hint of humor in the corner of his mouth.</p><p>Neil froze, even as his body picked up interest. It had been bad enough listening to Andrew play without asking; how would he feel if he knew Neil was doing—this, with Andrew’s face in his head? He didn’t know the etiquette of this type of situation. Was he supposed to call? Text? Was this a face-to-face conversation? What was he going to say, <em>“Do you mind if I picture you while I jack off?”</em></p><p>He crawled out of bed, arousal still smoldering and feeling vaguely disgusted with himself. The jittery feeling followed him all day. When the staff room door slammed too loudly, he nearly jumped out of his skin. He tried to pawn it off as too much coffee; Matt laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, but Andrew—well, he couldn’t meet Andrew’s eyes.</p><p>It was tempting to bail on what he now thought of as his music session that afternoon, but next week was finals week and this might be the last chance he had until fall. Andrew was already playing when he got there. Mozart. Andrew rarely played Mozart. Neil’s breath caught in his throat at the playful eruption of notes, and he crept in as quietly as he could.</p><p>Not quietly enough. “What’s eating you?” Andrew asked, stopping abruptly mid-melody to look at him.</p><p>“Nothing.” But the lie fell flat. Andrew waited; they both knew his patience far exceeded Neil’s, and Neil caved with a sigh. “It’s just. I’m not looking forward to the end of the school year.”</p><p>It was a tiny fraction of the truth. Somehow Andrew saw the iceberg below the surface; Neil never knew how. But he caught the moment Andrew’s eyes drifted to his mouth, the almost predatory shift. <em>Oh,</em> he thought dazedly. <em>Oh</em>.</p><p>Andrew watched as Neil came over, set his papers down on top of the piano, took up the spot on the piano bench that he had claimed and that they never talked about. Neil fumbled for what to say; he wasn’t completely inexperienced but he didn’t have enough to count, not now. Not with someone who mattered.</p><p>“What do you want, Neil?” Andrew’s voice was as level as always, but his eyes darkened at whatever he saw in Neil’s face.</p><p>“I—can I kiss you?”</p><p>Andrew raised his hand to brush against Neil’s jaw, feather-light. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he warned, and leaned in.</p><p>He kissed like a Brahms concerto, harsh and dark and overwhelming, and then unexpectedly soft and gentle. Neil clamped his hands between his knees to fight the almost impossible urge to touch, to pull Andrew close and then closer still. When they broke apart Neil thought he might have been trembling from the impossible beauty of it all. Andrew’s forehead rested against his for a span of a few ragged breaths, and then he was gone, turning to the expanse of ivory in front of him.</p><p>“Go,” Andrew said. Neil nodded mutely, standing on weak legs. His papers somehow ended up cascading to the floor, and he could’ve sworn he heard a quiet laugh behind him as he gathered them up.</p><p>As the door closed behind him, he heard the first notes of what he thought was a Haydn sonata filter after him. He staggered to his classroom and put his head down on his desk and didn’t move for a long time.</p><hr/><p>Neil was making lunch—well, pouring cereal into a bowl and peeling a banana—the next afternoon when his phone buzzed and kept on buzzing. He glanced at it before picking up. “Andrew?”</p><p>Music greeted him, one of Beethoven’s sonatas that always seemed to top the Spotify playlists. He listened for four minutes without a word, the music swelling over and surrounding him even through his phone’s pathetic speaker. When it drifted to the end, soft and sweet, he stared at the screen for a long moment. “Thank you,” he finally said, then cleared the roughness from his throat. “Andrew—”</p><p>The line went dead.</p><p>It happened again at ten a.m. the next day. A Chopin nocturne. Neil huffed, then pulled up a text thread.</p><p>
  <em>Come over</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Why</em>
</p><p>Neil tapped his fingers against his thigh for a moment while he considered how truthful he should be.</p><p>
  <em>Because I want to kiss you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You can do that over here</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is that an invitation?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I assumed that was obvious</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ok</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Heading over</em>
</p><p>Neil grabbed his keys. He wondered as he walked if he should’ve brought something with him. Food, maybe. <em>Condoms,</em> his idiotic brain whispered. But—that’s not what this was, was it? His experience with sex included getting off with Kevin a few times when they were both too stressed to function during finals at college, and that one time Robin asked him to help her figure out if dick was, in fact, as overrated as she always thought it was. (The answer was yes. Neil had not been offended.)</p><p>Before he could sort out his confusion, he was standing in front of Andrew’s house. Treble the cat stared at him from the window, judging. He almost turned back, but he could hear the strains of unfamiliar music from the house, and he raised his hand and knocked.</p><p>Andrew let him in with a skeptical eyebrow. “You walked?”</p><p>Neil shrugged as he kicked off his shoes. “Why not? It’s not far.”</p><p>Andrew accepted that and led the way through the small house, following the music. It was some sort of rock, and Neil laughed at himself at his own surprise. “What were you doing before I invited myself over?”</p><p>“Playing video games,” Andrew answered. There was something brightly colored on the TV screen, but it barely registered because Andrew was right there, crowding into his space. “Now, what were you saying?”</p><p>Neil grinned. “I think I said I wanted to kiss you.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>And then Andrew’s mouth was on his again, and this time it was Beethoven, it was tender and deep and there was so much behind it, so much being held back. Andrew’s hands in his hair were a tether, the only thing that kept Neil from drifting away on the current of unfamiliar sensation. He wasn’t totally sure how they ended up on Andrew’s couch, but he relished the solid weight of him, the heat of his body through Neil’s thin t-shirt.</p><p>He expected to flinch when Andrew’s hands started mapping him out; but though his breath hitched involuntarily, he decided he didn’t care. Andrew didn’t seem to either. The kisses grew more heated as Andrew explored the ridges of scars that Neil knew couldn’t be missed. Neil broke away from Andrew’s mouth to trail his lips over the stubble on his jaw, then down his neck, taking note of the way Andrew shivered as he lipped at the tender skin of his throat.</p><p>“You’re a menace,” Andrew murmured, and Neil laughed against his skin. He could feel Andrew, pressing into his thigh, and he knew Andrew could feel him too, but neither of them seemed to feel obligated to do anything about it. They kissed until their mouths were sore, then spent some quality time, separately, in Andrew’s tiny bathroom. Andrew ordered a pizza, Neil paid for it, they played the video game for a while, pausing it occasionally to kiss some more.</p><p>“What are you doing this summer?” Neil asked, idly toying with Andrew’s hair. Andrew had decided partway through the afternoon that Neil could touch, and he loved feeling the softness between his fingers.</p><p>Andrew hummed, not opening his eyes. “Didn’t really have plans, other than piano lessons.”</p><p>“You take piano lessons?”</p><p>The laugh was a quiet burst of warmth against Neil’s shoulder. “Teaching, not taking.”</p><p>Neil smiled, pressing his lips into Andrew’s hair. “Do you think maybe we can keep doing this?”</p><p>There was a long pause, and then a nearly silent: “Yes.”</p><hr/><p>The summer passed in a haze of sunshine and music and Andrew. One afternoon at the beginning of July, Andrew plopped Neil in front of the baby grand that occupied his entire spare room and started teaching him scales. Neil’s ear was good but his hands were clumsy, and he made himself cringe more often than not.</p><p>After a few days he bought a keyboard without Andrew’s knowledge, and played until his hands ached, until he was running scales in his dreams, until the notes came easily and he found himself lost in the rhythm of it.</p><p>When Andrew finally came to his apartment, weeks later, he raised an eyebrow at the keyboard in the corner. “Well that explains it,” he said cryptically, and proceeded to kiss Neil into oblivion. That was the night Neil learned what Andrew’s mouth felt like elsewhere, the night he realized for once and for all that everything with Andrew was different.</p><p>He tried to explain it once, just before school restarted. Not to Andrew, who already understood, but to Matt and Dan, who didn’t. They had invited him to dinner, and he went, more out of a sense of guilt than anything else. Dan’s belly was starting to swell, and she rested a protective hand on it and smiled at Neil when he asked her how she was doing, and the smile was a Haydn concerto.</p><p>“Are you happy?” Matt asked, partway through the meal.</p><p>Neil didn’t know how to answer that question. <em>Happy</em> sounded so trite; such a simple request. <em>Happy</em> was ‘Chopsticks.’ Something for a child to master, something bland and palatable and easy to swallow.</p><p>His friends exchanged looks at his hesitation, and he swallowed down the temper that flared. “I’m—fulfilled,” he finally settled on. That wasn’t enough for them, and he held up a hand at their protests.</p><p>“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said slowly, weighing each word. “I have too much history to forget. It comes back when I don’t want it to, and it used to leave me just kind of...empty, you know? Like I felt like a ghost, but my heart was still beating. And nobody’s really understood that before. But Andrew does. He gets it.”</p><p>“I guess I can understand that,” Dan said, hesitant. “I’m just worried that you’ve become very dependent on him in a very short time.”</p><p>“I’m not dependent on him,” Neil said. Almost snapped, if he was being honest. “He’s not trying to fix me, and I don’t need him to. It’s...it’s like music. You don’t need it, but it makes you feel like <em>more</em>, you know what I mean?”</p><p>Matt and Dan let the conversation slide, and they moved on to other topics, and eventually Neil went back to Andrew’s house and crawled into his bed, into the warm arms that wrapped him up. Andrew held him close and kissed him and asked him if he wanted to talk about it.</p><p>Neil shook his head, but after a few minutes he asked, “How come you hardly ever play Mozart?”</p><p>Andrew propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Neil where he lay flat on his back. One hand traced Neil’s scars through his shirt while he thought. “I learned to process through the music,” he murmured after a while. “Did you know that when Beethoven was going deaf, he started composing pieces mostly in the higher registers? It was what he could still hear, and it’s still great, of course, but it’s more limited. It’s flawed, in a way.”</p><p>He paused, his hand splayed across Neil’s abdomen, fingers playing notes only he could hear. “Mozart is different. Mozart is what I thought life would be like before I learned better. It’s perfect, or as close as you can come. Every emotion is in there, in just the right amount. Hard as fuck to play sometimes, but when you get it right, it’s like getting high. But sometimes it feels like a lie. Or a dream. Bach and Brahms, Beethoven, even Wagner and Liszt, that’s what I’ve known. Sometimes I need to play them, because that’s the only way I can purge what’s under my skin.”</p><p>Neil thought about that late that night, after they’d made love slowly, deliberately, curling deeper into each other with their release. Andrew had fallen asleep with his hand on Neil’s chest, and Neil gently rested his own hand over it, fingers interlaced. He thought about the distinction Andrew had made, all those months ago; and he thought about the joy that rose in his chest when he heard Andrew’s fingers dancing with the keys, the perfect staccato.</p><p>He understood. He always had.</p><p>That it mattered, when someone wasn’t necessary, but was loved.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed this super nerdy journey through classical music; I am your host, <a href="http://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com">Fuzz.</a>  I've mentioned before my anxiety about replying to comments, but please know that I absolutely adore and cherish them, they are the reason I keep posting my incredibly random ideas on here.  So thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to come yell at me on Tumblr!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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